Winter of Discontent

by Jeanne M. Dams

  “Don’t know about a key. We need the assistant”

  “The assistant … oh, the assistant! Bill’s assistant.”

  Jane turned once more to the desk. An appointment calendar lay to one side. She found the address book at the back and made a call. After a few barked commands she hung up.

  “Said he had to go to class. Coming here instead.”

  Jane has that effect on people.

  We sat, growing more and more restive while waiting for the assistant to arrive, and when he finally came, I wasn’t sure the wait had been worth it. The boy, a Sherebury University student named Botts or Potts or something like that, was amiable and willing but not especially capable. His primary duties were to fetch and carry for Bill, and fill in when Bill had to be away. I’d never actually had a conversation with him, but the few times I’d seen him in action, so to speak, I had discovered that he apparently knew almost nothing about the collection, and very little about serving the public. He was no use at all in helping anyone with research.

  He was, I had learned, reading history at the university. One wondered what they were teaching him.

  However, when we explained the situation to him, he was more than happy to mind the store while we went to find lunch. “We may not be back before closing time,” I warned him. “Can you lock up?”

  “Oh, yes, there’s a key right here.” He opened the top desk drawer and pawed through it. “Oh. Well, p’raps in here.” He tried another drawer.

  Jane raised her eyes to the ceiling in a long-suffering expression and pushed me out the door. “Best find Bill,” she said in a stage whisper that I’m sure young Potts, or Botts, could hear. “Young pup’d let anyone walk off with the lot.”

  We had a quick sandwich and tea at a café across the street. The sandwich wasn’t especially good, but our minds weren’t on food. I asked if Bill had been there. Well, he might for once have decided he was sick of his own sandwiches, mightn’t he? But no one at the café had seen him for several days. Jane and I went over Bill’s disappearance, and over it, and over it again. We could find no logical explanation.

  “It’s simply impossible,” I said, finally. “He didn’t go anywhere of his own free will, because his car’s there and he would never have left the museum unlocked and unattended. Agreed?”

  Jane nodded morosely.

  “He didn’t simply wander off in a daze, because his mind’s still quite sharp. Agreed?”

  Another nod.

  “And there’s no possible reason for anyone to kidnap him, or anything ridiculous like that. He has no money to speak of, he has no criminal background—there’s just no reason for someone to abduct him!”

  Jane sighed. “Things happen. No reason.”

  “Yes, but to a harmless elderly man in the Museum of Sherebury? There are surely lots better targets. But look, I said something a minute ago that gave me an idea. We don’t actually know much about Bill’s life after he left Sherebury, or even in the war. Is it possible that something happened, maybe a long time ago, that would make him vulnerable now?”

  “Bill?”

  The incredulity in her tone carried conviction, but I persisted. “Okay, maybe it’s far-fetched, but he was in the war. There are still some strong feelings about that, even after all these years. What if he saw something he shouldn’t have, and suddenly ran into someone …”

  Her look of disbelief stopped me. “Well, maybe I haven’t thought it out well enough. I still think there’s a possibility lurking somewhere. But unless we can figure out what it might be, there’s only one other idea that makes any sense, and I’m afraid I don’t like it much at all, but—”

  “Stroke, bump on the head. Thought of it already. Something to destroy his memory. Only possible thing.”

  “Well, then,” I said, rising, “we have to try to find him. He can’t have gone far if he’s ill.”

  It would be tedious to detail all the places we looked. We started near the museum. There’s a rather nasty little alley between the Town Hall and the shop next door. There were rubbish bins and lean stray cats and disagreeable smells and, I was very much afraid, an occasional rat scurrying out of sight. That was all.

  We tried the buildings nearby. We tried a pub that Jane said Bill frequented. We tried perhaps a dozen other increasingly unlikely spots. Everyone was friendly and helpful. No one had seen Bill that day.

  We had to give up, finally, out of sheer weariness. The museum had closed, my parcels inside. It didn’t seem to matter much. I couldn’t have carried them all home, anyway. It was all we could do to walk home unencumbered.

  When I reached my front door with its inviting little porch, I raised my eyebrows at Jane. Wordlessly, she preceded me inside. We dropped onto the soft couch in my parlor and uttered groans in unison.

  “I may never get up,” I moaned.

  Jane grunted.

  Alan had built a small fire in the grate. I wished I could feel as pleasant and cozy as it looked.

  Alan appeared in the doorway. Bless the man, he had glasses in his hands, glasses containing amber fluid. “I heard what’s happened,” he said. “Derek phoned. I thought you’d need a restorative.” He handed each of us a glass.

  I took a healthy sip of my bourbon and then sighed. “Derek wasn’t much help. Alan, we’re really worried. Anything could have happened to a man his age, and we’ve looked every place we could think of. He’s simply vanished.”

  Jane sipped her scotch and glowered. She muttered something under her breath about police. It didn’t sound complimentary.

  Alan left the room for a moment and returned with a glass of his own. He sat down by the fire. “There are rules about these things, as both of you well know. There’s very little the police can do under ordinary circumstances. Derek knows you’re both upset. That’s why he rang up.”

  Jane glared.

  Alan continued. “He said he’d promised you he’d check with the Heatherwood House people, and he did just that. He said they were quite cooperative, and more than a little concerned.”

  “And no one had the slightest idea where Bill might be.”

  “I’m afraid not. The staff did organize a search around the grounds, in case Bill had come home in someone else’s car and fallen somewhere. They also sent a staff member to drive the road into town, because it was just barely possible he’d tried to walk home. And they checked the hospital again. No one is taking this lightly, I do assure you.”

  “Except the police,” Jane said.

  Alan was patient. “They have to follow procedures, Jane. I understand how you feel, but—”

  “No, you don’t.” Jane set her glass down with a thump and was out of the room faster than I’d have believed she could move.

  I struggled out of the soft depths of the sofa and started to follow her.

  “Leave it, love.” Alan’s voice was almost sharp. “She won’t listen to sense just now. She’s angry and scared. I do understand how she’s feeling, of course, even if she doesn’t believe it. So do you. We’ve both lost a spouse.”

  “I’ll never forget what it felt like, wondering if Frank was going to make it. It’s the not knowing that’s the worst”

  “Indeed. But just now she wants to be alone with her fears. I’ll talk to her tomorrow, unless Bill has turned up by then.”

  “I hope he does.” But I didn’t believe it, and Alan’s sigh told me he didn’t, either.

  That night the weather changed. We went to bed, tired and despondent, about ten, with the windows wide open and a light blanket over us. Sometime in the middle of the night I woke huddled up against Alan’s back. He is a man of comforting bulk, tall and solidly built, and he’s usually nice and warm to cuddle up to. Not now, or not warm enough. I realized I was both cold and cramped. A chill wind was blowing the curtains into the room. The cats had crowded against us for warmth, pinning us down. I fought free of them and the blanket, closed the windows, and tossed a comforter on the bed.

  I didn’t sle
ep for some time, what with the cats and Alan rearranging themselves, and my last waking thought was of Bill, perhaps out in the cold December night.

  THREE

  THE WEATHER WAS EVEN WORSE THE NEXT MORNING. A DETERMINED rain, mixing at times with sleet, was washing away all remnants of autumn. I woke late to the welcome smell of coffee, but my eyes had barely popped open when I thought again of Bill. I put on my warmest robe and hurried down to the kitchen.

  I didn’t even say good morning to my husband, who was making toast. “Alan, if Bill’s out in this—”

  “I know, love. I’ve rung Derek. Bill’s not turned up, and they’re launching a real search. It’s been nearly twenty-four hours, now, and the weather changes the scenario. They’ll find him.”

  He spoke with the confidence of forty years of policing. I didn’t answer, but I thought plenty. An elderly man, a fall, perhaps a broken hip, pneumonia … the familiar story.

  After picking at my breakfast for a few minutes, I scraped my chair back from the table and stood up. “I’m going over to talk to Jane. She’ll be frantic.”

  “I’ve already talked to her.”

  “Oh?” Of all the responses in my repertoire, that one is probably the most annoying. Said with the intonation I used, it implied anger, disdain, disbelief, a whole range of emotions in one syllable. When I was a teacher I used to use it with particularly naughty and insubordinate schoolchildren. I didn’t recall that I’d ever used it before with Alan.

  “She was here an hour ago,” Alan replied evenly, “angry and distraught. She demanded I phone Derek.”

  “And?” Same tone.

  “I told her I already had.”

  “Oh.” I took a deep breath. “Alan, I’m sorry. None of this is your fault, and I’m being hateful. But I’m afraid I don’t have quite your faith in the police.”

  “I do assure you, as I have assured Jane, that they will do all in their power—”

  “I know, I know. They won’t neglect their duty. But, Alan, they’re young, at least relatively. They think of Bill as an old man, probably senile. They’ll look for him in places where he might have wandered. Even the staff at Heatherwood House is thinking that way. You told me they were searching the grounds yesterday. And they, of all people, ought to know Bill isn’t like that.”

  Alan made a visible effort at patience. “People change, Dorothy. When they’re Bill’s age, sometimes they change suddenly. He might have had a stroke, or a heart attack. Something might have happened to confuse and disorient him.”

  “I know. And that’s what I was thinking yesterday. But they haven’t found him in any of the likely places. This isn’t a huge town, Alan.”

  “What are you suggesting?”

  “You’re going to think it’s silly.”

  Alan refilled my coffee and waited.

  “All right.” I sat back down and took a good sip of coffee before I could work up the nerve to go on. “I think it’s possible that he has—oh, the expression sounds so melodramatic—that he has met with foul play.”

  Alan didn’t smile. He probably knew I’d throw something at him if he did.

  “He was in the war, Alan. He was taken prisoner. Is it completely impossible that something that happened way back then has caught up with him now?”

  “For example?”

  That, of course, was the weak point. “I don’t know. I don’t know enough about the war. I was too young to have more than the vaguest idea of what was happening, and of course we in America didn’t have a clue, anyway. I realized, the first time I came to England, in the I960s, and saw all the bomb sites, that you over here experienced the war. Except for our soldiers, and of course the civilians living in Pearl Harbor, we only read about it. But I have a good imagination”—Alan did smile a little at that—“and I imagine that there are still some secrets floating around, and some strong feelings.”

  “Certainly there’s still a good deal of classified material. As for strong feelings—well, we do have long memories, it’s true.”

  I thought of a story that had been told me long ago. It concerned two ancient churches in the fen country of East Anglia. By the 1980s the congregations had become so small that it was necessary to combine the two parishes into one. Now the fen country, centuries before, had been an important battleground of the English Civil War. Oliver Cromwell and his men with their short, round haircuts had cut a wide swath, lopping the heads off countless statues in the churches and wreaking other destruction. However, there was strong Royalist support in certain areas.

  It happened that one of the parishes under discussion in the story was historically Cromwellian in sympathies, and the other Royalist. At a parish meeting in the latter, one of the old men of the congregation had stood during the discussion of the merger and shouted indignantly, “What? Go to church with them Roundheads?”

  The Civil War ended—officially—in 1649. Yes, the English have long memories.

  I finished my coffee. “I’m still going over to talk to Jane. She doesn’t think much of my idea either, but I can’t just sit here and wait for someone to find Bill. There must be something Jane and I can do. He’s been gone too long now, and it’s cold out there, Alan.”

  He nodded. “Wrap up well if you’re going out in it.”

  My husband doesn’t always agree with me, but he’s long since stopped trying to tell me what to do. I often think I don’t appreciate him enough.

  Even to dash next door, I put on a full set of waterproofs, including wellies. This rain meant business. I didn’t bother even to knock until I was inside the back door. Civility is one thing. Sense enough to come in out of the rain is another.

  “Jane, it’s me,” I shouted over a tumult of bulldogs. “May I come in? I mean, I already am in, but do you have time to talk?”

  Over the frenzied barking I thought I heard a voice in the kitchen.

  Jane was sitting at the kitchen table, an untouched cup of coffee in front of her. She looked awful. Her usually ruddy face was gray. There were purple smudges under her eyes. She was wearing the clothes she’d had on yesterday, and looked as though she had slept in them. If she’d slept. She looked up, muttered something, and let her head droop again.

  This would never do. I’d seen Jane angry, combative even. I’d never seen her defeated.

  I shooed the dogs out of the room, plugged in the kettle, removed her coffee cup, and found the teapot.

  “Don’t want any tea.”

  “Well, you’re going to have some, so you might as well resign yourself. What did you have for breakfast?”

  She shook her head.

  “This won’t do, you know. It won’t help Bill to worry yourself into a state. You can’t think on no sleep and no food, and you need to do some productive thinking.”

  “Why?”

  “Because Bill’s somewhere, and I don’t think the police are going to find him. I don’t think they’re looking in the right places. You’ve got to help me think where the right places are.”

  “Tried yesterday.”

  “Yesterday we didn’t know for sure he was missing.” The kettle shrieked. I made the tea and poured her a cup, with lots of sugar and milk. “Today we know. We can start to look in earnest, if you’ll help me work out where.”

  I made her drink the tea while I boiled an egg and made toast, and after she’d eaten she looked a little better. A little. Not much.

  As I cleared away the dishes, I began my pep talk. “Look, Jane, I know how you’re feeling, but—”

  “No.” She raised her head and looked me in the eye. “Anyone you cared for ever gone missing?”

  “Yes. My husband. And not just missing, but dead. Jane, the hours I spent in that hospital waiting to hear how Frank was doing after the heart attack … yes, I do know how worried and scared you are.”

  She held up a hand in a gesture of apology. “Sorry. Didn’t mean to be rude, but … not just worried and scared. Helpless. Old.”

  That stopped me. I put t
he dishes in the sink, carefully, so I wouldn’t break them—or myself. I sat at the table. A silence fell.

  “You don’t know, yet,” said Jane after an eternity. “Not old enough. Don’t know how people look through you. Talk about you as if you weren’t there. Smile politely when you make a remark.” She spoke in a monotone.

  I found my voice. “I can’t imagine anyone treating you condescendingly, Jane. You’re so forceful, so vital.”

  “Never used to do,” said Jane. “Terrified them, I did.”

  I waited for a satisfied chuckle. It didn’t come.

  “Used to be a character, now I’m a nuisance. Haven’t had the decency to die. Worse for Bill out in that bloody awful place.”

  Jane never swears. I gulped. “Heatherwood House? It seems like a lovely place, and the staff—”

  “Kind. All of them. So bloody kind.”

  “Oh.” A chill ran through me.

  I’d tried not to think about what lay ahead for me and Alan. We were both healthy, we weren’t all that old, Alan had family to help out. I’d clung to those thoughts, tried to keep at bay the terror of old age.

  I’ve never been afraid of dying, but the thought of living too long does terrify me. When Frank died unexpectedly in his early sixties, I’d thought I faced a future entirely alone, childless and bereft. Then Alan came into my life, along with Alan’s family of children and grandchildren. I was able, for a while, to put off uncomfortable thoughts.

  But every day, every hour, brought us closer to the time of our lives when anything might happen. Physical weakness was more than a possibility. My knees were already in bad shape, and would only get worse. Knee replacement? Confinement, perhaps, to a wheelchair?

  Alan had always taken good care of himself, but one read every day about much younger men, fit and healthy, dying of heart attacks or strokes or undiagnosed cancer or a hundred other things. What if Alan became ill, too ill for me to care for him?